TODAY

“I want to have phone sex,” says the woman.

“You’ve got the wrong number,” I tell her.

“I thought this was the help line.”

“It is,” I say. “Help for drunks and addicts.”

“I’m an addict.”

“Then we’ll talk about what’s bothering you and I’ll tell you about some meetings nearby. Where are you?”

“In Queens. And I’m stark naked. What are you wearing?”

“A heavily insulated antibacteria protective suit and a gas mask. What do you care what I’m wearing?”

“Are you sexy?”

“I’m a drunk. Is that sexy?”

“Very.”

“Do you want help or do you wanna play?”

“Both.”

“Well, I’m not playing.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Answering the emergency phone line for people who are desperate.”

“I’m desperate for sex.”

“Enough with the sex.”

“How long have you been sober?”

“Long enough to know that if I don’t stop talking to you we’re gonna wind up drinking in bed.”

“Now you’re talking.”

I hang up. I look around the little room, where a few other volunteers are fielding calls from people trying to get or stay straight. I sigh. Sometimes I’m real good at this stuff, sometimes I’m not. By listening to the pain of someone else who’s tempted to get high, I often feel more grounded. Once in a while, I can even say something to help the sufferer.

         

I take the subway downtown to the Bowery, where I run a men’s group at a city-sponsored rehab house for guys just off the street. At ten in the morning, half the riders on the Lexington Avenue line look like street people. I study the faces. A guy wearing a moth-eaten fedora has hands caked with dirt. He’s drinking wine out of a paper bag. Why him and not me? I’m thinking, There but for the grace of God . . . A bag lady smells awful. A gorgeous redhead, dressed in a tailored suit, smells of fancy perfume. I smile at her. She doesn’t smile back. But the bag lady smiles at me as she hits me up for money. I give her a buck. She says, “Bless you.” I wonder how Heshie distributes the blessings. How some of us keep from falling off the deep end. How others don’t. How fourteen years of sobriety has taught me that the tenuous cord separating sanity and madness is strengthened only by this singular notion of service.

Down in the Bowery, the men are waiting for me. They’re pissed. Of the half-dozen participants, the guy I’ll call Pete is angriest.

“Screw you, Yetnikoff, and screw the twelve steps you’re always peddling,” he says.

“This isn’t even a twelve-step meeting,” I say.

“Good. So don’t mention them. You don’t even know what the fuck they mean.”

“They’re steps toward God.”

“So you know God?”

“I’m not saying I know him. I’m saying I’m stepping toward him.”

“Well, I’d like to step toward a fucking job. I been out of work for six months.”

“Last week, you were in the psycho ward, where you were out of your mind. Now at least it looks like you’re back in your right mind.”

“Nothing’s right without money.”

“Let’s talk about gratitude.”

“You talk about gratitude. I wanna talk about money. I wanna talk about how once you get out of the joint, you can’t find no work no way.”

“So you’re here, living for free. That’s something to be grateful for.”

“Here comes your fucking gratitude list.”

“Making a list ain’t gonna kill you, Pete.”

“It ain’t gonna get me a job.”

“You sure? The right attitude changes everything.”

“Money changes everything.”

“That’s what I thought. I spent my life struggling to make millions. I was sure the millions would make me happy. But when I made the millions, I went nuts.”

For the remainder of the session, I listen to the other guys talk about their misery, fears and frustrations. A few have hope. A few are actually experiencing the healing of our fellowship. A few realize that talking about it helps. I realize that the group helps me. I’m still green at this counseling stuff. When I started, one of the staff professionals said I was talking too much. What else is new? I carry inside my head a portion of a prayer that pleads to God, “Relieve me of the bondage of self.” That goes back to listening to others. The elders say it’s all about giving up my willfulness and heeding the will of God. Understanding that will—at least for me—isn’t easy. Heshie works in mysterious ways.

         

When I get back home, the phone’s ringing. It’s a big-shot Washington, D.C., lawyer considering suing the major labels for defrauding artists. He wants to sign me up as a consigliere for his case. This gets me excited.

“You know more about questionable accounting principles than anyone,” he says.

“I know that the artists are greedy and the labels are less than straightforward. If you ask me who’s worse, I’ll have to think about it.”

“What overall philosophy drives the companies?”

“Pay the artist as little as you can. Tie up the artist for as long as you can. Recoup as often as you can.”

“What are the most egregious ways that the companies cheat?”

“I’m not sure ‘cheat’ is the right word. But I am sure, at least in my day, that royalties were never paid on 100 percent sales. You paid on 85 percent and called the other 15 percent breakage—even though the breakage applied to shellac records from the forties and fifties. What’s more, you pay artists half royalties on their overseas sales. You say that’s due to the cost of setting up your subsidiaries. Even when those costs have diminished, though, you keep paying the lower rate. On foreign sales, the company benefits from a tax credit on the artists’ royalties. The royalties have nothing to do with the company, but the company pays less taxes. Meanwhile, the artist doesn’t even know it’s happening. You charge at least half of the video costs to the artists. You charge the artist the cost of packaging. That could be 10 percent—or one dollar on the wholesale ten-dollar price of a CD—when actual packaging costs might be a quarter. It goes on and on. Or at least it did in the music world of the seventies and eighties.”

“And the artists’ lawyers never objected?”

“In the age of excess, the artists’ lawyers were as greedy as the artists and the labels. The artists’ lawyers were going for huge advances for their clients and themselves. They didn’t give a shit about the small print. It was all about the big bucks.”

“So it was corrupt.”

“Morally maybe. But legally it was written out in documents no one bothered to read.”

“But what about the big point—isn’t it true that even when the company goes in the black with a CD, even when massive sales wipe out costs, even then the artist’s statement can still show red—or a lot less black than it should?”

“There are ways to pump up those costs on paper so that royalties are delayed or even permanently denied.”

“And you’re willing to testify to those ways in a court of law?”

“I’m not willing to do anything but get off the phone with you and try to regain my goddamn peace of mind.”

“Can I call you again?”

“Let me call you.”

I put down the phone and start wondering. My mind wanders. I’m thinking about royalties. The artists weren’t the only ones who got screwed. At the start of 1990, while I was still running the world, Steve Popovich, one of my former in-house promo geniuses, was screaming bloody murder. Back in the seventies, Stevie owned Cleveland International, an indie label that brought us Meat Loaf to distribute during the megahit days of Bat Out of Hell. Steve was certain CBS Records had shorted his label on royalties. The statute of limitations, however, prevented him from auditing.

I liked Steve. He was instrumental in bringing me the Jacksons. He was a down-to-earth record man. So I agreed to waive the statute. Fast forward a couple of years:

Sony has taken over. Sony refuses to acknowledge my waiver. Steve asks me to intervene. I do. I write a letter confirming the waiver. Now Sony is pissed. I get a nasty letter from their lawyer saying I’m in violation of my settlement agreement, the United Nations charter and half of the Ten Commandments.

“If you don’t like it,” I respond, “sue me.”

The Sony lawyer calls. It’s a she.

“Why are you so nice to Popovich and so uncooperative with us?” she asks.

“Because Popovich is a good guy and you’re a bunch of assholes.”

“We have legal rights.”

“Fine,” I say. “Serve me with a subpoena and get my testimony. But be careful—you have no idea what I might say.”

Sony never contacts me again.

Meanwhile, Popovich sues. An audit goes forward. Legal warfare breaks out. Giant Sony attempts to crush little Steve Popovich.

“Walter,” asks Steve, “what should I do?”

“Hang in. Sony will settle on the courthouse steps.”

Which is just what they do—for several million.

So in retrospect, I’m thinking maybe I should talk to this Washington lawyer digging into royalty practices. But I wonder about my moral culpability while I was the Great Honcho. Did I condone these practices?

Yes, like everyone else in the industry. Also, in the Age of Excess, what CEO was concentrating on royalty accounting? Ahmet? Clive? Mo? Hardly. Geffen? Less hardly.

I ask myself another question: If I had found a modicum of spirituality in the Age of Excess, would I have acted differently? I hope so. The truth, of course, is that no one then—or now—has ever confused me with the Dalai Lama.

Yet my ego still tells me I can change the world. I can go where no alcoholic has ever gone before. I can right all wrongs.

Let me calm down. Let me stop envisioning myself as the brave iconoclast, back in the public spotlight, front-page headlines in the New York Times, blowing the lid off the music biz. Let me sit and talk to Heshie for a minute or two. Let me practice a little yoga, stretch my spine, open my heart chakra, remember to breathe.

Sun salutation.

Downward dog.

Hello, Heshie.

Goodbye, stress.

Well, at least less stress. At seventy, my life is busy as hell. I make a date with a woman. I’m always making dates with women. I call my sponsor. My sponsees call me. They help me. They bug me. I help them. I bug them. I go to Paterson. I go to the Bowery. I get involved with Road Recovery, an outreach program that helps young people see how the sober life is a good life. Seasoned veterans—from a lead guitarist to a carpenter who builds the stage—teach master classes on every aspect of the music field. Road Recovery arranges seminars at schools for disadvantaged kids where stars like Dr. John and Doug E. Fresh come and speak.

Then there’s commerce. Jews love commerce. I’m involved in everything from soundtracks to hip-hop to performance poetry to artist development. I’ve even toyed with major label acquisition. What would that do to my serenity?

Here comes another fax.

It’s a reminder to attend the meeting of the Caron Foundation board. Caron is an addiction treatment and rehab center where I recently went for a week of self-examination. I didn’t go because I had a slip, but because I saw how much I wanted to control everyone else’s addictive behavior. Control is another addiction of mine. I got so involved with Caron that I wanted to help perpetuate their good work. Now that I’m on the board, I’m working hard not to try and control the other board members.

The phone keeps ringing. This time it’s an extra-aggressive reporter from a major newspaper.

Iago himself—Tommy Mottola—has been fired by Sony. A scandal is brewing. Rumors are flying. Do I know anything about it?

“I know everything,” I tell the reporter.

“Shoot.”

“When I got fired, the company was making four hundred and fifty million a year in pre-tax bottom-line net profits. When Mottola got canned, it looks like they were losing two hundred and fifty million a year. Something may be rotten in the state of Denmark. And it could be worse, because if they’re not cooking the books, they’re certainly warming them up. For example, it was reported that they were putting DVD manufacturing revenues into the music operation. But DVD’s include a helluva lot more than music.”

“Mottola had to deal with Internet piracy, though. You didn’t face that.”

“No, I faced some real-life pirates. You want details?”

“Yes.”

I stop myself. Am I about to revert to rage and vengefulness? What am I doing? Where’s my serenity? Is this Heshie’s will? Should I really be ranting and raving about my old enemies? Aren’t I beyond that?

“I’ll call you back,” I tell the reporter.

“When?”

“When I have something to say.”

Meanwhile, I have something to read. Can’t remember whether it was my poetry pal or someone in the program, but some high-minded friend gave me this book about the spirituality of being imperfect. I relate to the thesis:

I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.

There’s a crack in everything. Even my recovery—especially my recovery—is full of cracks.

A rabbi says, “In the world to come they won’t ask you why you weren’t Moses, but why you weren’t the best Walter you could be. That means accepting your flaws.”

An eighteenth-century Jesuit says, “Rejoice every time you discover a new imperfection.”

So I’m rejoicing, even as I’m still amending. I’m amending my behavior and actually writing out amends. The process has been going on for years. In the case of June, my ongoing amends take the form of acknowledging her soul when I do something especially righteous. In the case of Steve Ross, I was lucky enough to reach him before he died. “I was a schmuck,” I said to Steve. “I was jealous of you. I treated you and your wife like shit. I want to say I’m sorry.” I could have said the same thing to a thousand other people. Steve was gracious enough, even on his deathbed, to reply. “You’re a temperamental guy. I always knew that. I didn’t take it seriously. But if you need for me and Courtney to forgive you, we do. I wish you nothing but the best.” Ross had class.

         

On my worst days, I regret lacking that class. I revert back to crass. I still want to blow the whistle on my adversaries, scream bloody murder, extract my pound of flesh, hoist the flag of my unconquerable ego. On my worst days, I’m still howling at the moon.

On my best days, I put on my helmet, rev up my Harley and hit the country roads outside the city. I go for hours. I’ve been asked to join a couple of biker clubs, but that’s not me. I ride alone. The wind in my face, the power of the thing beneath me, the thrill of speed kills all thoughts. I just am.

On my best days, I try and treat myself the same as I treat the guys down on the Bowery. If I lose it, if I hear an angry voice inside my head, I just listen to it. I let it say what it has to say. I try not to judge it. I try to accept it, understand it and gently move on. If I feel that Heshie is listening, I speak to him. Even if I’m not feeling it, I get on my hands and knees and pray for calm. Sometimes calmness comes; sometimes it doesn’t.

I get confused until my poetry pal reminds me that Saint Augustine said the most important things happen when we’re in a state of confusion. If that’s the case, everything in my life is important because I’m so often confused. But when the fog of confusion lifts, when the chattering voices inside my head—voices that argue, voices that demean, voices that drive me to distraction—when those harsh voices die down, I have a recurring vision that never ceases to amaze me:

I’m not living my life, I’m watching it unfold like a movie. I’m not the producer, not the director, not the screenwriter. I’m just a guy in the audience entranced by a story that keeps changing. As the story changes, so does the guy. In some ways, he’s still a prick looking for that big emotional score that will set him free. But that’s happening less and less. The prick is starting to see that the score is an illusion. The beauty of the story is in letting it emerge. The pressure of shaping it—controlling it, manipulating it—is no longer on me. Heshie is the writer, not me. And if Heshie is in charge, that means that I can finally relax.